Dead NES controller used as a Makey Makey shield

[Guillermo Amaral’s] NES controller was in great shape. Well, except for the fact that it didn’t work. Upon closer inspection it seems the shift register — which is the only IC on these ancient peripherals — had given up the ghost. But he made it usable again by making the NES controller into a MaKey MaKey shield.

You should remember the MaKey MaKey. It’s a little board that lets you create controllers out of just about anything — bananas being one of the more popular examples. All he needed to do is wire up the controller’s buttons to the board. For the task he chose to use extra long pin headers. To find the location for holes in the case he applied red ink to the top of each pin, then held the PCB up to the outside of the controller. After drilling at each red mark he glued the pin headers in place and started in on the controller’s original circuit board. Once all the point-to-point wiring was done he had a working controller. See for yourself in the clip after the jump.

Yeah I agree, there’s really no such things as a “dead” NES controller. Similar with gutting an NES to put a PC or DVD player or something equally pointless inside. The NES and its parts are extremely repairable. And not to be a jerk about it, but using an NES controller as a shield would make it too cumbersome to really use for anything.

if there is one thing I hate about today’s names for products, mostly in tech, is the way it’s call called. Like arduino is a good example. I predict that the next hot product is going to be poopy woopy or weapeemio. Maybe keepymeepy or just shimbangwimbang.

I really hate to bash any hack, but I have to wonder why someone would use THIS board…it is so f**king big and it simply isn’t needed…a Teensy 2.0 would have done the job just as well and just as easy at a tiny fraction of the size, and all inside the controller housing so it would feel correct when held in the hands.

I’m starting to get the impression you guys don’t get that it was for #MakeyMakeyMonday (it says so right in the post), the whole point was to use a MakeyMakey on Monday. The absurdity of it was what made it well worth the effort. Now if it where Tuesday I would have to use a ATmega32u4, but it wasn’t, it was Monday.